Wednesday, October 7, 2015

I thought I would dust off the cobwebs over here for those of you who aren't on Instagram where I spend most of my time these days.

During the summer months I don't often have much time to sew. I spend a lot of time in our garden, trimming, planting, picking and enjoying the sunshine. This year we had an incredibly hot summer, setting record after record for heat. Mr. Squash and I gave up the ghost on our 20 year old air conditioner and had a much larger, new unit installed. Now we can enjoy the indoors when the thermometer hits 100+, which it did many times this summer!

What better way to spend those hot days inside, but quilt! Ever we visited my friend Lynn Wilder at Wilder's Last Resort this summer, and I saw her Heartfire design up close and personal, I had to make my own version! I knew I wanted to make my version using creams and browns. I had Toasted, from Jo Morton tucked away in my stash. But those were all neutrals, and I needed a contrast. Almost immediately I saw a line from Buggy Barn fabrics, Down to Earth that would work. But then I needed a focus fabric for the block centers. While visiting Lynn's Sew'n Wild Oaks class at In Between Stitches earlier in the summer I found the perfect fabric in Jo Morton's Charleston line!

Because I had a lot of other projects that needed to be quilted and bound, I thought I would scale my version of the original pattern down a bit. Once I finished the blocks, I needed to decide what fabric to use in the setting triangles. Yes, I am guilty of not planning ahead, but the quilt police did not come knocking at my door. I went bin diving in my stash and found the perfect fabric - Marble by Holly Taylor for Moda. I really wanted to use Charleston for the outer border as well, but something just wasn't right. Thanks to a suggestion from Lynn to make the inner border a bit narrower, Charleston worked perfectly!

Here is an up-close look at one of my favorite blocks. This is really a very easy block to make. The most important thing is to be sure the block fits Lynn's measurement guide, otherwise the setting triangles won't fit. Lynn's pattern has great instructions for those of us who are occasionally "challenged by the numbers"!

Next up I'll be spending a lot of quality time with my longarm finishing this and 5 other tops that have yet to be quilted and bound. I hope you're all enjoying a wonderful fall!